NICK MATTHEWS welcomes the return of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s music to the repertoire of this years’ Three Choirs Festival
Take back the land for the common good
PAUL DONOVAN applauds a highly important book that appears at a crucial time in the present biodiversity and climate crisis
DESPICABLE PASTIMES: John Ferneley, Edward Horner Reynard and his Brother George Grouse-Shooting At Middlesmoor, Yorkshire, with Their Gamekeeper Tully Lamb, 1836
[Public Domain] 
LEO BOIX reviews a caustic novel of resistance and womanhood by Buenos Aires-born Lucia Lijtmaer, and an electrifying poetry collection by Chilean Vicente Huidobro
MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
New releases from Christina Alden and Alex Patterson, Odette Michell, Clementine Lovell
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
The Lie of the Land
Guy Shrubsole, William Collins, £22
THIS book provides vital reading for government ministers, activists and anyone who cares about the future of the planet.
Guy Shrubsole reveals how the limited number of people who own land in Britain have overseen the trashing of this asset under the guise of being good stewards.
There are telling statistics, such as that just 5 per cent of the land is taken for private homes and gardens. This figure rises to 8.8 per cent if the definition is extended to all land built on. A further 73 per cent is farmland and 10 per cent forestry.
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RICHARD MURGATROYD is disappointed by an ambitious survey that fails to get to grips with the relationship between human consciousness and nature
From John Clare country to ancient fenland, Ed Miliband’s solar farm approvals risk industrialising precious rural spaces — we must find greener solutions that don’t sacrifice our countryside’s beauty, writes DAVE BANGS